Trump’s new tariffs anger key trading partners

BANGKOK — US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s lat­est set of tar­iffs drew im­me­di­ate ob­jec­tions from Amer­i­ca’s trad­ing part­ners, in­clud­ing Chi­na and Japan, with Aus­tralia’s trade min­is­ter slam­ming them as “com­plete­ly un­jus­ti­fied” yes­ter­day.

The ad­min­is­tra­tion an­nounced tar­iffs of 10% to 12.5% on 60 economies late Thurs­day, say­ing the coun­tries had failed to ad­e­quate­ly en­force a ban on goods made with forced labour.

The new tar­iffs took ef­fect just as stop­gap levies Trump im­posed af­ter a sting­ing de­feat at the Supreme Court ex­pired yes­ter­day.

Aus­tralian Trade Min­is­ter Don Far­rell re­ject­ed claims link­ing Aus­tralia, a ma­jor ex­porter of beef, gold and cop­per, to mod­ern slav­ery and rais­ing the tar­iff on its ex­ports to the US to 12.5% from the 10% lev­el im­posed af­ter Trump’s “Lib­er­a­tion Day” hikes last year.

“We be­lieve that amongst all of the coun­tries in the world Aus­tralia does take the is­sue of slav­ery, mod­ern slav­ery, se­ri­ous­ly, and will con­tin­ue to do that,” Far­rell told re­porters in Ade­laide.

“Aus­tralia be­lieves the high­er tar­iffs are “com­plete­ly un­jus­ti­fied and we will con­tin­ue to lob­by the Unit­ed States Trade Rep­re­sen­ta­tive to re­move all tar­iffs on Aus­tralian goods.”

New Zealand Prime Min­is­ter Christo­pher Lux­on said 12.5% tar­iffs on his coun­try were “ex­treme­ly dis­ap­point­ing,” un­jus­ti­fied and harm­ful to trade.

A US in­ves­ti­ga­tion serv­ing as the ba­sis for the tar­iffs did not pro­vide mean­ing­ful ev­i­dence to sup­port al­le­ga­tions of forced labour.

Eu­ro­pean Union for­eign pol­i­cy chief Ka­ja Kallas ques­tioned the US stance in com­ments on Chan­nel News Asia.

“If you com­pare our labour laws to the ones of the Unit­ed States, I mean we have, peo­ple have paid va­ca­tions, we have very good con­di­tions, labour con­di­tions for our em­ploy­ees, so it’s not re­al­ly ground­ed,” Kallas said. (AP)